


Palimpsest

by queenofthorns



Series: Terra Incognita [2]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-17
Updated: 2013-05-17
Packaged: 2017-12-12 02:48:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/806282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenofthorns/pseuds/queenofthorns
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A sequel of sorts to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/803531">Terra Incognita</a>. Jaime's setback forces a brief halt to the journey towards King's Landing. Set after 3.07 (Warning: ridiculously self-indulgent and schmoopy; there is cuddling and also a lot of talking.)</p><p>No spoilers except for the show through aired episodes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Palimpsest

Brienne wakes to the hammering of fists on the door, and reaches for her missing sword. She glances around for anything she can use as a weapon, and settles on the flimsy chair. If she’s quick enough, she can club the intruder and take his weapon. 

She moves noiselessly to the door and flings it open in one swift motion. Wren’s fist is still raised as Brienne drops the chair with a clatter.

“Beg pardon, m’lady,” Wren says. “Steelshanks sent me to tell you and the Kingsl- Ser Jaime, that is, that we’re leaving within the hour.” 

“You sounded as though you meant to break the door down,” Brienne says in mild rebuke.

“No one answered, m’lady. I thought perhaps you were sleeping or ...” He peers around Brienne at the figure on the floor. “Sleeping.”

“Very well,” Brienne says. “Would you be so kind as to bring us some bread and water?”

“Aye, m’lady.” Wren whistles on his way down; Brienne recognizes the tune and slams the door. She’s heard enough about bears and maidens to last her seven lifetimes.

It’s odd that all this noise hasn’t woken Jaime. Brienne kneels beside him. “Jaime, you must rise.” 

She shakes his shoulder gently. His hair is dank with sweat, his skin is flushed, and when his eyes flutter open, they are dull and glassy. “I don’t think I can,” he says, teeth chattering. 

By the time she hauls him to his feet, he’s shivering so violently that he can scarcely stand. “Just a few steps,” she says, guiding him. His knees buckle; Brienne breaks his fall as he pitches headfirst onto the bed. 

“I seem to be making a habit of this,” he whispers as she lays him back on the pillows. “I’m lucky you are so strong, my lady.”

She’s lifting Jaime’s long legs and settling him under the covers when Wren returns with their food. 

“Watch him,” she tells Wren. “I’ll fetch Qyburn.”

“No.” Jaime catches her hand in his good one. “Stay with me.”

“Qyburn,” she orders Wren. “And be quick about it.”

***

“I was afraid of this,” Qyburn says, unwrapping the bandages around Jaime’s right arm. “The ... exertions with the bear.” He raises the stump towards the light, poking at abraded flesh and puckered skin. The hiss of Jaime’s indrawn breath and his bruising grip on her hand betray his pain; Qyburn takes no notice nor, so far as Brienne can tell, does he make any effort to be gentle. 

“The wound is clean,” Qyburn says at last, wrapping it in clean bandages.

“No more boiling wine then?” Jaime opens his eyes at last. “You must be so disappointed.”

Qyburn ignores Jaime, addressing himself to Brienne. “It’s not wound-fever,” he says. 

“Then what is it?”

“Fatigue, perhaps. Ser Jaime has driven himself hard these past few days, though I warned him. Malnourishment. Or ... I have seen the body take fire from the spirit’s turmoil. It may be all of these things.” 

“And what will heal him?” Brienne asks.

“Time,” says Qyburn. “He must rest, body and spirit.”

“He can rest when we reach King’s Landing,” Steelshanks says from the door. “We must ride on.”

A clap of thunder sounds, ominously close, followed by the rattle of wind-driven rain on the wooden shutters. “In his state, in this storm, he cannot ride; he’ll fall off his horse if he tries,” Qyburn says firmly. “His condition may worsen. He must rest, if only till the storm passes.”

“Lord Bolton’s orders,” Steelshanks insists, “were to deliver the Kingslayer to Lord Tywin Lannister as soon as possible. We’ve already lost a day's ride.” He glares at Brienne. “We’ll tie him to his horse if need be.”

“No!” Jaime drops Brienne’s hand and struggles one-handed to raise himself from the bed. 

_Locke_. After Jaime lay unmoving in the mud, Locke’s men had flung him on his belly across the horse’s back and tied him, ankles to wrist, as though he were a beast they had slaughtered for its pelt.

Brienne stands, squeezing Jaime’s shoulder before she turns and draws herself up to her full height. Walton has to tip his head back to meet her eyes. “Do you think Lord Bolton wants you to deliver Ser Jaime to his father trussed up like a goose?” she asks. “Do you think Tywin Lannister will look kindly on that?”

Walton blinks first. “Very well, m’lady,” he says. “We’ll stay another night.” He clomps down the stairs, muttering obscenities under his breath, though Brienne only catches the words “unnatural” and “wench.”

Brienne returns to her place by Jaime’s bed. “Well done,” Jaime tells her through clenched teeth. 

Qyburn pours a measure of a dark liquid and hands it to Brienne. “If you would, my lady? I fear Ser Jaime does not fully trust me.”

Brienne privately agrees with Jaime. Despite Qyburn’s mild manners, there is something deeply _wrong_ about him, something that goes beyond the absence of his maester’s chain. His smile never touches his eyes. _And he looks at me sometimes as though he’d peel the skin from my flesh and the flesh from my bones to see what lies beneath._

“What is it?” she asks him.

“It will bring the fever down,” Qyburn says. Brienne brings the medicine to Jaime’s lips and he swallows without demur, though he makes a face at the taste. 

“And here is dreamwine,” Qyburn places a small flask on the window sill.

“Take it away,” Jaime says.

“It will help you sleep,” Qyburn says.

“Yes,” Jaime says. “But I dislike the dreams it brings. Take it away. And get out.”

Brienne follows Qyburn to the door. “Above all,” he warns her before he leaves, “keep him warm.”

***

Brienne piles cloaks, moth-eaten blankets, and a stained featherbed that Wren has wheedled out of the innkeeper on top of Jaime, but he’s still shivering. At last, he sinks into a fitful sleep, eyelids fluttering, his left hand clenching and unclenching the sheets. Brienne watches him until the ever-dimming light and the unrelenting drumbeat of the rain lull her as well.

She’s woken by a sharp pain lancing from the base of her neck to the corner of her right eye, and by the sound of Jaime’s voice.

“What did you say?” she asks, stretching her neck till the tendons pop and the scabs from the bear’s claws protest.

“There’s no reason you can’t share the bed,” Jaime tells her.

Brienne can think of a hundred reasons why she shouldn’t lie beside Jaime, but next to the ache in her bones and the burning of her eyes, none of them seem particularly important.

“I’m still cold,” Jaime says. That decides her.

The instant her shoulder touches his, she knows this was a mistake. She remembers his damp, bare skin against hers, the weight of him in her arms, and rolls to the farthest edge of the bed, which is still far too close to him.

“I don’t bite,” Jaime murmurs. “And I’m much cleaner than I was.”

“Go back to sleep,” she orders him.

“I can’t,” Jaime says. “When I close my eyes, the bed starts spinning.”

“Do you want the dreamwine?” she asks. "Shall I fetch it from Qyburn?"

“No,” he says. “I just want to ... talk.” 

“About what?” she asks. _What could I say that would interest you?_ Septa Roelle had told her she should “take an interest” when men talked about themselves, but Brienne was always more interested in their horses and weapons and armor than in the men themselves. Once, she and Jaime might have talked of swords and tourneys, but that topic would be surpassingly cruel now. They are no longer the knights of summer. _We are no knights at all; one of us maimed, the other a woman._

“About anything,” Jaime says. “Tarth.”

“Tarth is beautiful,” she says. “The water is so clean you can watch schools of fish dozens of lengths below the surface. Dolphins play in the bay, and the light at dawn is so clear you might see the far side of the world.”

“Beautiful indeed. I hope I may see it someday.”

Brienne cannot imagine that the son of Tywin Lannister, acknowledged uncle to the King and Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, will ever visit Evenfall Hall and if he were, by some strange chance, to come, she cannot imagine he would ever be welcome. _He would be welcome to me._ “Tell me about Casterly Rock,” she says, banishing that thought.

He rolls onto his side, so they are eye to eye. “It’s a great pile of stone and gold and Lannisters, going back to the Age of Heroes,” he says, frowning. “Their _legacy_ to those of us who came after.” His voice deepens and changes so it’s no longer his own. “Lannisters don’t act like fools.”

“What do you mean?” Brienne asks, confused.

“I used to dive from the cliffs near the Rock, a hundred feet down into the water.”

“That sounds dangerous.”

“It was,” Jaime says. “My father had me beaten bloody when Cersei told him what I’d done. I suppose he thought a beating would make me somewhat less anxious to break my neck.”

“And did it?”

“Once my bruises healed, I did it again. So then he had me beaten for disobeying him. And still I would not stop.”

“Why?” Brienne asks.

For a fleeting instant, she sees the boy he once was. “I never felt so light and so free, in those seconds before I hit the water. I could never give that up.” He smiles. “And it was the only battle I ever won against my father.”

Brienne has never considered that being the son of Tywin Lannister might sometimes be a burden as well as a blessing. “My father is the kindest man I know.” _He has never once shown himself ashamed of me, or disappointed that, of all his children, i was the one who lived._

“I’m not surprised,” Jaime says. “Who would be unkind to you?”

“You!” Brienne is appalled at his shameless ability to forget all the things he’s said to her. 

Jaime has the grace to look abashed. “You must have wished me dead,” he says. 

“No,” Brienne says, more gently. “I did wish you silent, though. Many times over.”

Jaime chuckles. He’s stopped shivering; it’s not long before his eyelids droop and his breathing grows steady. 

Rain muffles the inn’s bustle; their room is cloaked in dim pearly light. It seems to Brienne that she and Jaime are utterly alone, this room an island in a foggy sea. They may wake to find themselves the only survivors of some great catastrophe, but for now, they are safe. 

She rolls over, closes her eyes and gives herself over to sleep untroubled by dreams. Sometime later, Jaime flings his good arm over her, and this is how Wren finds them when he brings the news from King’s Landing.


End file.
